RetroPie

Here is my entire build out of the RetroPie PiGrrl Zero Plus (WITH Sound) Retro Handled Gaming System. What an awesome and a fun project to build; since my time is limited this took about 3-4 days to fully complete. I did mess up in the beginning when I went to remove the the GPIO pins that come preinstalled. I actually removed 2 pad’s from the board and I had to retrace the entire pad’s back to the build (this costed me a day in build time).

The device itself is pretty nice the battery time lasts about 1-3 hours depending on usage the buttons are clicky I actually went and installed soft buttons of A,B,X,Y buttons and kept the clicky buttons on the DPAD. If you notice once I screwed down the screen the screws provided with the 3D printed build I over turned them causing the screws to come out of the plastic which pissed me off a lot. I was able to sand the plastic down which made it less noticeable.
This can play almost anything from Arcade, Atari, Super Nintendo, Nintendo. Almost everything up til N64 (I tested playing Nintendo 64 ROMs it loaded them just could not handle them on the Pi Zero).

I’ve been testing RetroPie / EmulationStation / HyperPie / AttractMode custom images for months my favorite with the best interface has to be hands down HyperPie. It could be a little laggy and time consuming finding the right ROM/Game you want. However the different mods from running ROMs via USB, Creating a favorites list and the customizations available are endless.

First i’m going to start with all of the products that I used in my RetroPi/Raspberry Pi build.

CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Kit with Clear Case and 2.5A Power Supply

This kit is great because it comes with the 2.5A power supply which is good for overclocking, it also includes the Raspberry Pi 3 B model, heatsinks and the case which I haven’t used. I always switch it for a fan powered case. $49.99 (Purchase)

Sliced 9 Layers Case Box + Cooling Fan +micro

Next I start off with 9 layer fan powered case which will keep your Raspberry Pi / RetroPie cool when you eventually overclock your device and it looks cool too! $10.97 (Purchase)

SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC

Next you want to make sure you have a good MicroSD card. I would stay away from buying these 2nd hand and do not buy them from eBay. I’ve purchased several from there and they were absolute garbage in the end caused me more money and headaches. Also if you are using HyperPie I would stick with the 128GB version or 200GB version depending on what type of ROMs you are adding the HyperPie image itself takes about 60GB. 128GB $39.99 (Purchase)

Nintendo Wii U Pro Controller – Black

I’ve tested almost every controller for the RetroPie and I always went back to using the Wii U Pro controller. I tried controllers from Xbox, PS3, 8bitDo, etc. The Wii U Pro controller just feels right. I’ve left the controller hooked up to the RetroPie for a full day I came back and it was still responsive. It’s a lot more expensive then most controllers but it’s worth. Also beware of fake knock-off brands. $39.99 (Purchase)

High-Speed HDMI Cable – 3 Feet

If you do not have an HDMI cable laying around you are going to need one. Any HDMI cable will do just make sure it’s long enough for your TV. $6.99 (Purchase)

I’ve been using HyperPie a lot lately, on my Bartop arcade as well as my RetroPie that’s hooked up to my 65″ HDTV. I had a few changes that I wanted to make such as:

Add the Favorites List to the top of the list

Remove Consoles/Packs that did not relate to me

One of the benefits of adding Favorites to the top of the list when you scroll all the way up it will stop at the first item. With over 8,000 games installed sometimes I want to be able to find my favorites list to get a quick game in.

Also I had about 15 systems/collections that either had blank ROMs or stuff that I was never going to play so I wanted to remove them.

Step 1. The first thing you need to do is SSH/FTP to your RetroPie using FileZilla.

This is how the Filezilla Configuration should look depending on your ReroPi’s IP address. Default username is pi and default password is raspberry

The file you need to edit is “attract.cfg“.

Please navigate to:

/home/pi/.attract

Above is a preview of my attract.cfg file. Lets say the display Top 100 Collection section that I have highlighted I wanted to remove, or place in a different area on the display wheel. You need to make sure you copy the entire section and either delete it, or place it in the section where you would like it to appear.

Once you make your changes save the file and re-upload it to your RetroPie/HyperPie using FileZilla.

Quick Note: Instead of using a default text editor, I used NotePad++ and I set this as the default editing program for my FileZilla FTP program.